It is not assumed that, when subjected to such "forces" of positive feedback, people do not try to find mechanisms with which to cope. The models assume that people do the best they can in the circumstances they face. What the models do is to identify conditions in which this is not enough to lift communities out of the mire. Turner and Ali (1996), for example, have shown that in the face of population pressure inBangladesh small land-holders have periodically adopted new ways of doing things so as to intensify agricultural production. However, the authors have shown too that this has resulted in an imperceptible improvement.
